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I am off tomorrow for a conference in South Korea organized by the Korean National Defence University. I hope to keep posting while I’m there.

In the meantime here is some Friday afternoon reading for you. On Monday I commented on the difficulties of using inspections to uncover clandestine activities absent good intelligence to guide the search, as illustrated by the Kumchang-ri debacle. (Incidentally, a couple of you pointed out that I had overstated the US’ right to conduct inspections at undeclared sites in North Korea as they must be by mutual consent—but that does not alter my conclusions about the problems of using them).

A former alum of this blog suggested I google “Yinhe” for another example. I hadn’t heard about this incident before but it illustrates the general point nicely. Here’s an article by Patrick Tyler from the NYT in 1993:

NO CHEMICAL ARMS ABOARD CHINA SHIP

A Chinese freighter that had been suspected by American intelligence of carrying poison gas ingredients to Iran is carrying no such cargo and will be allowed to go on its way, United States, Chinese and Saudi officials say.

After an inspection at the Saudi port of Damman, certification that the ship was not carrying any chemical weapons cargo was signed Saturday by representatives of all three governments, including an American technical adviser to the Saudis who was not identified.

China denounced “self-styled world cop” behavior by the United States and demanded compensation for what it said was the disruption by United States warships and aircraft of its ocean commerce.

American officials here and in Washington said there would be “no apology” because the United States had acted in good faith on intelligence from a number of sources, all of which proved to be wrong. The United States had said the ship, the Yinhe, had sailed from a Chinese port with an illicit cargo of thiodiglycol, a mustard gas base, and thionyl chloride, used in nerve gas.

American officials would not elaborate on their assertion that they had acted on faulty intelligence. But the incident is an embarrassment to the Clinton Administration, which has been engaged in a war of words with Beijing over human rights, arms sales and a hefty trade imbalance.

The incident also raised questions about how a treaty to control the spread of chemical weapons would be enforced with inspections.

“The chemical weapons convention will not become effective until 1995, and its verification mechanism is yet to be established,” the Chinese Foreign Ministry said. “If such behavior of self-styled world cop is to be condoned, can there still be justice, sovereign equality and normal state-to-state relations in this world?”

In a dispatch from Saudi Arabia, the New China News Agency said the chief Chinese representative on the inspection team, Sha Zukang, had released the inspection report, which said that “the complete inspection of all the containers aboard the Yinhe showed conclusively” that the chemicals “were not among the ship’s cargo.”

The report also said, “The U.S. Government undertakes to inform the governments of the countries which the Chinese ship Yinhe had been scheduled to call of the results of this inspection and to seek to insure a smooth entry of the ship into the ports concerned to unload its cargo.”

Officials in Washington were said to be discussing whether the United States now had an obligation to pay compensation for the cost of diverting the ship to Saudi Arabia and flying inspection teams to the Persian Gulf port for 10 days of cracking open cargo containers to inspect their contents.

In Washington, the State Department spokesman, Michael McCurry, said late Saturday that the United States felt it had acted “responsibly” and thanked China for the “open” and forthright” way it had submitted the ship for an inspection. Suspicions of a ‘Sting’

The embarrassing conclusion to the incident left United States officials wondering what had misfired after they said they had received intelligence so reliable about the contents of two dozen of the 782 containers on the cargo ship that American officials in late July began demanding through private diplomatic channels that China turn the ship around.

Some American officials said the incident raised questions of whether China had undertaken a “sting” operation to embarrass Washington.

One indication that China had wanted a showdown, officials said, was that China first made the incident public, saying on Aug. 8 that its cargo vessel approaching the Persian Gulf was under intrusive surveillance by American warships.

Another indication, they said, was in the Chinese Foreign Ministry statement this weekend, which said that on Aug. 4, China “put forth a positive proposal for a third-party inspection” of the Yinhe, but that the United States initially refused.

“The Yinhe was compelled to stay adrift on the high sea for more than 20 days with its crew suffering from a shortage of fresh water,” the Chinese Foreign Ministry said.

Anyone wanting more information on future technological developments to help detect clandestine nuclear activity might want to check out a excellent recent article by Vitaly Fedchenko over at Verification.

Comment

I meant to add that Richard Clarke’s most recent book, Your Government Failed You has a fantastic account about tracking Russian nuclear weapons deployments.

The story, which involves the great Dennis Gormley, centers on Soviet units called “Mobile Technical Rocket Bases” (PTRB in the Russian acronym) that would ferry nuclear warheads to mobile missile units in the field:

The Soviets claimed to have no nuclear warheads in Germany and derided America for having put several thousand atomic warheads on German soil. Nonetheless, U.S. photography revealed that the Soviets had built well-guarded nuclear weapons bunkers in Germany. If a war started, we planned to destroy the bunkers quickly. My friend Dennis Gormley reminded me recently of what had happened in the late 1980s when he was running a small consulting firm. A young Russian soldier swam across the Oder River and defected. His captain, he said, had driven over the motorbike for which he had saved for years. It was more than the youth could take. So he defected and was quickly debriefed by U.S. intelligence and found to know nothing of value. The report on him said little but noted that he had worked in some sort of transportation unit called a PRTB.

Gormley had just explained to me his own work on trying to find PRTBs, the Russian acronym for Mobile Technical Rocket Base. Gormley believed that PRTBs actually placed the nuclear warheads on top of the Soviets’ mobile missiles in Europe. The warheads were stored separately to prevent some renegade officer from starting a nuclear war. In the event of an authorized war, the missiles would meet up with the warheads in predesignated clearings in the German woods. Along would come the PRTB and mate the warhead to the missiles. I told Gormley about the defector, and with Dennis’s help, the defector was debriefed again. His explanation of what a PRTB did was exactly what Gormley had guessed. And he was happy to locate his PRTB for us. He also noted that, of course, the nuclear warheads were not in the nuclear warhead storage areas. The storage sites were empty. They were just there for the Americans to bomb and think they had destroyed the threat. The real storage areas were hidden.

Years later after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Professor Gormley went to the East German site where the defector said the weapons had been. He found an abandoned base with “Keep Out” signs noting a radiation hazard. Police chased him away.

I have a sneaking suspicion that the Chinese have the same procedure. At least one article on the Xinhua site, as Li Bin argues in Science and Gobal Security, described an exercise with a mobile ballistic missiles that was very similar. Here is Li’s description:

Another article on Xinhua News Agency’s website describes details of an exercise of patrol and retaliation of the Chinese strategic nuclear force. According to this article, the surviving missile TELs began their patrol after absorbing nuclear attacks; the missiles carried nuclear warheads and the warheads were put on the missiles on the fifth day in bad weather after the patrol began; the missile was simulated to be launched on the eighth day.

Surprise, surprise.

China has announced its intention to sell more nuclear power plants to Pakistan. Kyodo News reports:

China has agreed to supply Pakistan with two additional nuclear power plants, Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi said here Saturday after President Asif Zardari’s just-ended visit to Beijing.

Qureshi told a press conference that the two sides signed an agreement under which China will supply two additional reactors at Chashma, in the Mianwali district of Punjab Province, about 200 kilometers southwest of Islamabad.

Pakistan already has one Chinese-built 325-megawatt nuclear power plant in operation there, while work is under way, with Chinese help, on a second power plant at the same site.

The planned third and fourth reactors, known as C-3 and C-4, are estimated to cost $1.7 billion, with a foreign loan component of $1.07 billion.

But, I hear you cry, doesn’t the Nuclear Suppliers Group ban members, including China, from selling to states that aren’t party to the NPT (except when it doesn’t)?

…Pakistani Foreign Ministry officials said China can supply additional power plants to Pakistan without approval from the Vienna-based NSG, on the grounds that China has already supplied two nuclear power reactors to Pakistan without its approval.

Of course, he ignores the fact that these plants were “grandfathered” when China joined the NSG. But, realistically, all the NSG has at its disposal to enforce its rules is the restraint of its member states. If China does sell the plants to Pakistan what’s the NSG going to do? Write China a very strongly worded letter? Expel it? Because that’d be really effective.

Bush Administration officials have, of course, repeated ad nauseam that the India exemption was a one-off and that Pakistan is a totally different case. But, if they haven’t realized it already China doesn’t share their world view much of the time. They may yet succeed in talking China out of this sale (although I’m not holding my breath), but it’s hard to imagine China announcing this agreement had the US-India deal not happened.

Comment [18]

Congress has mandated that the next administration complete a Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) by early 2010. Senators McCain and Obama have both indicated support for nuclear reductions consistent with sustaining deterrence, and there is growing bipartisan support for a serious reexamination of U.S. nuclear weapons policy along these lines.

But many conservatives are not on board. The George C. Marshall Policy Institute just released the transcript of a recent talk on nuclear weapons policy by Senator Jon Kyl, a staunch conservative and the second-highest ranking Republican in the Senate. The Arizona senator’s remarks provide a good window into the five main rhetorical strategies and arguments that hardliner conservatives are likely deploy in the 2009-2010 debate over the NPR and NPT Review Conference.

Discredit calls for nuclear reductions by associating them with unilateral nuclear disarmament. In his remarks, Senator Kyl immediately pivots from noting the bipartisan call for nuclear reductions by secretaries Perry, Shultz, Kissinger and Senator Nunn in the now-famous WSJ op-eds to castigating a so-called “nuclear freeze” movement that supposedly recommends a course where “the U.S. alone is disarmed.” Actually, the main message of the nuclear freeze movement (which was active in the 1980s) was (take a wild guess) to freeze nuclear arsenals, i.e. stop building new nukes, and not unilateral disarmament. More fundamentally, Senator Kyl is arguing against a straw man: there is not a single serious U.S. leader or respected expert from either side of the political spectrum advocating for unilateral disarmament.

Mischaracterize the primary diplomatic objective of nuclear reductions as seeking to influence Iran and North Korea. Senator Kyl ridicules the notion that nuclear reductions by the United States would have any impact on the nuclear ambitions of rogue states, saying “of course” they would not. But convincing Iran and North Korea to forgo nuclear weapons is not the animating diplomatic goal of nuclear reductions. Rather, it is to address concerns among non-aligned countries that the United States is not living up to to its NPT Article VI nuclear disarmament obligations. “By fulfilling our commitment to make progress toward nuclear disarmament,” concludes a policy task force co-chaired by former secretaries Perry and Albright, “we give ourselves much greater leverage to persuade other countries to take the firm steps we consider necessary to prevent terrorists and additional countries from acquiring nuclear weapons.”

Suggest that America is getting left behind in a new arms race. Senator Kyl laments that “other states are modernizing their nuclear weapons and the United States is not.” Actually, these states are mostly playing catch-up—and they have a long way to go. Russia, for instance, keeps most of its SSBN fleet in port, where they are sitting ducks. Moreover, the United States is modernizing its strategic arsenal, for example, by deploying the more accurate Trident II D-5 missile to the SSBN fleet, improving the avionics on B-2 bombers so they can fly under radar, and putting the high-yield warheads and advanced reentry vehicles from dismantled MX missiles on Minuteman ICBMs while improving Minuteman’s guidance system. In any event, America’s existing nuclear arsenal—to say nothing of its overwhelming conventional superiority—is more than sufficient to deter Russia (let alone China or Iran) and reassure U.S. allies that America remains committed to their security.

Selectively interpret technical data on warhead reliability. Senator Kyl chides Congress for not funding the Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW), suggesting that “each time we discover a problem in our legacy weapons…we have changed the weapon beyond its original design, in many cases because the components aren’t even available any more, they are so old-fashioned.” One gets the impression that our nukes are junkers patched together with duct tape and chewing gum. Yet each year since 1997, the secretaries of defense and energy have certified the arsenal as safe and reliable. As to a possible future need for an RRW or a new facility for manufacturing large numbers of plutonium pits, there is no need to commit now: an NNSA study found that the majority of plutonium pits for most nuclear weapons have minimum lifetimes of at least 85 years, roughly twice as long as originally expected.

Offer optimistic cost projections for new nuclear weapons facilities. Senator Kyl suggests that “with as little as $300 million we could begin the construction of facilities like the Chemistry and Metallurgy Facility Replacement Project (CMRR).” What is important to recognize, however, is that this is merely a down payment on a $2 billion project. Moreover, completing this facility will cost at least 2-3 times as much as DOE originally promised, according to DOE’s FY 2009 budget request:

The CMRR CD-1 was approved on June 17, 2005 with a preliminary cost range of $745,000,000 – $975,000,000.

[snip]

Based on continued examination of the project and recent, industry-wide experience related to the increases in the cost of construction of comparable facilities, the estimate for construction of the Nuclear Facility at CMRR is now viewed to be significantly higher. Initial estimates place the revised TPC above $2,000,000,000.

Who’s to say costs won’t escalate further?

Let’s be clear: for long as the United States possesses nuclear weapons, it must continue to maintain an appropriate nuclear weapons complex to ensure that the arsenal is safe and reliable. But meeting this need does not require American taxpayers to write DOE a blank check for constructing large new nuclear weapons manufacturing facilities decades before they might possibly be needed.

Comment [12]

I am in Shanghai, attending the Stanley Foundation’s US-China Regional Dialogue on Nuclear Disarmament and Nonproliferation here at Fudan University.

This is part of a two-week tour of China that will include Beijing and Qingdao.

I should be able to blog pretty regularly. In addition, James has promised to resume posting and I’ve lined up three very special guest bloggers for next few weeks.

So, we should be totally covered.

Comment [1]

By all accounts, the US has succeeded in getting North Korea to agree to inspections at undeclared facilities as part of the verification process—another impressive diplomatic victory for Chris Hill. There’s little prospect the US will try to use this provision imminently as it appears to have agreed to a “plutonium first” approach. But, when (or rather if) we ever get to the point of worrying about whether North Korea has an enrichment programme the US hopes inspections at undeclared sites will be useful in proving or disproving its existence.

The problem is (as I’ve noted in passing before) it may very well not turn out to be as simple as that.

Let’s assume (and I strongly suspect this is correct) that, based on intelligence information, the US is pretty certain North Korea has at least a small clandestine gas centrifuge enrichment plant (CGEP), but no idea where it might be. I can see one of two scenarios unfolding.

Scenario 1: The US decides to play the inspection lottery

On the basis of sketchy intelligence, the US picks a handful of the literally thousands of buildings in North Korea that could house a GCEP and asks to inspect them. North Korea agrees. The inspectors show up and find nothing (which they knew would happen as soon as North Korea agreed to the inspections).

The US doesn’t alter its opinion about the existence of an enrichment programme. It argues that the GCEP is located somewhere else (an entirely logical conclusion based on the available information). North Korea, China and Russia have little sympathy and tell the US that it has had its inspections and found nothing so can’t it just get over the whole centrifuge issue already. The US has little success in explaining probability theory to an audience that has no interest in hearing it and everyone gets very cross with one another.

Sound implausible?

Well, it’s pretty much happened before. In 1998/99 at Kumchang-ri. Interestingly, when you google “Kumchang Korea” the top hit is an article of Jeffrey’s from 2005 where he recounts the story for a different purpose (this was in his less temperate days when his posts had titles like “David Sanger: Two Time Loser on Kilju and Kumchang-ri?”).

The post contains a nice article by Daniel Sneider of the San Jose Mercury-News summarizing what happened:

In 1998, satellite images and other intelligence gathered at a site called Kumchang-ri, near North Korea’s border with China, seemed to indicate that the North Koreans were building a secret nuclear reactor and reprocessing facility to replace ones then under international control. For months, intelligence agencies followed developments at the site, observing tunnels being dug, watching concrete being poured, looking for air shafts and cooling ponds for evidence it was a nuclear facility.

…

It [The Clinton administration] demanded access to the site, going to the brink of renewed confrontation.

For a time, the North Koreans pushed the confrontation. “They recognized it was a useful thing to have us spun up for a period of time,’’ the former analyst said. Finally, they agreed to allow access.

Two visits by American inspectors, using sophisticated technology, revealed that while this was a sensitive defense facility of an undetermined nature, “there was no way that it was nuclear,’’ said Pritchard, a conclusion he said was reaffirmed in a 2003 review of the incident.

Bottom line: Visits to undeclared sites are only as effective as the intelligence to guide them.

Scenario 2: The US decides not to play the inspection lottery

Fearful of scenario 1 and a replay of the Kumchang-ri embarrassment, the US still accuses North Korea of harbouring a clandestine GCEP, but doesn’t ask for any unannounced inspections. North Korea, China and Russia tell the US that it should put up or shut up (i.e. use the inspection provisions at undeclared facilities it insisted upon or stop making the accusations). The US doesn’t take the bait and, again, the tension created does no favours to the process.

In short, having negotiated inspection provisions at undeclared facilities the US is in a potentially awkward position whether it uses them or not, unless it knows where to look. And that is a big “unless”. North Korea, as they say, is a hard intelligence target.

Comment [2]

I am fascinated by China’s development of conventionally-armed ballistic missiles, particularly the development of a conventionally-armed DF-21 variant, the DF-21C (pictured above, it seems).

I recently read an article in Defense News by Wendell Minnick on conventionally-armed DF-21s and the threat to US carriers.

It’s a good article. One observation, though — the author and experts describe the conventionally-armed anti-ship ballistic missile (ASBM) as the DF-21 C or Charlie. The conventionally-armed DF-21 is the DF-21C. But I believe that the ASBM variant has a different number — the DF-21 D or Delta.

A brief history of the DF-21: China developed the solid-fuel, medium-range DF-21 through the 1980s, with deployment starting in the early 1990s. Deployments did not begin in earnest, however, until the late 1990s. The Chinese refer to having two variants of the missile — the DF-21 and the DF-21A, which correspond to the IC designation CSS-5 Mod 1 and Mod 2, respectively. (See the recent DOD/DOE white paper, for example.)

As early as 2005, descriptions of the long-awaited conventional DF-21 were described as the DF-21C — which would presumably correspond to a CSS-5 Mod 3. That seems to be the mystery missile carried by various pictures of China’s shiny new TEL. (Above is the most widely published of those images.) Sinodefence.com has a nice gallery of DF-21C images. I offer them with the disclaimer that I haven’t convinced Calluzzo to model them yet. So, I merely observe that other people think these are 21Cs and that seems like a reasonable working hypothesis to me.

That brings us to the ASBM. An anti-ship ballistic missile is a special kind of conventionally-armed ballistic missile. Chinese Military Power describes the new ASBM as a “based on a variant” of the DF-21. The “variant” is presumably the DF-21C/CSS-5 Mod 3. That would make the ASBM version the Delta and the Mod 4.

I am pretty sure that I am right about this. But your comments, dear readers, are welcome.

Comment [28]

As I mentioned a couple of days ago, Elaine Grossman had an excellent story on the B61 Mod 12 LEP. Elaine reported that NNSA was considering either increasing the size of the B61 or reducing the explosive yield to create “real estate” for new new safety and security features:

However, if the Pentagon could either increase the size of a given weapon system or reduce its explosive yield, additional safety and security features imagined for the replacement warhead might instead be incorporated into existing hardware as it is overhauled, the Air Force official said.

I’ve now been told that NNSA is considering precisely those two options: either to build a device that would require a physically larger casing or reducing the yield.

The policy question is whether Congress ought to view reducing yield as a “new” weapon that does not conform to the military characteristics of the existing stockpile. On the one hand, reducing yield would ceteris paribus reduce capability. But other things are seldom equal. The B61 Mod 12 will likely have all sorts of new components outside of the nuclear explosives package (fuses, spin rocket motors and the like) that will more than offset any loss in yield.

As yield declines, NNSA opens the US up to claims that it is pursuing “mini-nukes” and other “more usable” nuclear weapons that would lower the threshold for nuclear war. That’s a concern in this case because the lowest yield setting of the existing B61 tactical variants is in sub-kiloton territory. The B61 is said to have a variable yield between .3 kt (300 tons, most likely the yield of the unboosted fission primary) and a few hundred kilotons.

One option is, presumably, to re-use the W84 pits that are sitting in the strategic reserve and have a mechanical safing device. (Both the W84 and W85 were derived from the B61 3/4 and the B61 Mod 10 was made, in turn, from reused W85 pits.) The W84 has a minimum yield of 200 tons (.2 kt).

Mod	Entered Stockpile	Comment
0	1969	No command or enhanced electrical safety, strategic bomb all converted to Mods 6 and 9 by October 1992
1	1971	Strategic bomb; replaced MK 28; all converted to Mod 7 by Oct 1992
2	1975	Inertial command disable; tactical bomb; 10-345 KT yield; no IHE; converted to Mod 8
3	1979	In stockpile, includes IHE, command disable, weak link/strong link signal generator; tactical bomb replacing MKs 28, 43, 57
4	1979	Same as Mod 3
5	1977	Nonviolent command command disable, weak link/strong link signal generator; tactical bomb replacing MKs 28, 57; 10-345 KT yield; no IHE; all converted to Mod 8 by June 1993
6	canceled	Upgraded B61-0; new PAL and IHE; IOC was to have been March 1991; included ENDS; cancelled Feb 1992
7	1985	Modified B61-1, in stockpile. Includes new PAL, IHE, backup fuzing, command disablement. High yield strategic SAC bomb replaced MK 28FI. Some Mod 7s were converted to EPWs.
8	canceled	Upgraded Mod 0; IOC was March 1991; included IHE, ENDS; canceled Feb 1992
9	canceled	Tactical bomb; Mod 0 conversion; included IHE and ENDS; canceled September 1991
10	1990	Yield between those of Mods 3 and 4 (0.3-80 KT); modified W-85 warhead in B61-4; in stockpile. uses IHE and ENDS
11	1996	EPW with a single yield in the hundreds of kilotons

Source: Comments, with the exception of the B61-11 are from Chuck Hansen, Swords of Armageddon, vol VI, Table 4-27. I am not 100 percent on the stockpile entry dates, but they should be within a year or so.

It would seem to me that there is no inherent problem with the idea of reducing yield, provided that the rationale is to create “real estate” for new security or reliability measures. In fact, that was precisely an exception outlined in the final Spratt-Furse language that prohibited the research and development of mini-nukes from 1994-2004:

Nothing in this section shall prohibit the Secretary of Energy from conducting, or providing for the conduct of, research and development necessary … (2) to modify an existing weapon for the purpose of addressing safety and reliability concerns …

It would seem to me that if Congress wanted to LEP the B61 at a reduced yield, while protecting our nonproliferation interests, they could fund the B61 Mod 12 LEP and reinstate Spratt-Furse.

Comment [5]

The Bush Administration has removed North Korea from the State Department’s list of state sponsors of terror, following precisely the provisional delisting scenario I outlined on the blog a couple of weeks ago.

I must say, I am rather proud to note “you read it here first” — on September 23. and September 28, Arms Control Wonk explained how this would all work.

Glenn Kessler had the story first, as far as I can tell. He’s been all over it the past few weeks and doesn’t disappoint with a solid description of the package:

Officials declined to release the text of the agreement but said North Korea had bent on two key points: potential access to facilities not included in Pyongyang’s nuclear declaration and permission for inspectors to take environmental samples. North Korea also dropped objections to Japanese and South Korean participation in the inspections, officials said.

The text uses vague terms for some of the purported concessions — it does not explicitly mention the taking of samples, for example — but the State Department’s assertions rest on a number of oral agreements, sources familiar with the document said. Rice instructed diplomats last week to obtain greater clarity from North Korea on some of the oral understandings before she signed off on the deal.

Note the use of “potential” to qualify access to non-declared facilities. The crux of the deal, as Helene Cooper explains, is to pursue a “plutonium first” approach regarding verification:

In the most significant part of the accord announced Saturday, North Korea agreed to a verification plan that would allow United States inspectors access to its main declared nuclear compound, at Yongbyon; international inspectors have worked at the site on and off for years. But the deal puts off decisions on the thorniest verification issue: what would happen if international experts suspected the North was hiding other nuclear weapons facilities, particularly those related to uranium enrichment.

Jay Solomon in the Wall Street Journal suggests North Korea agreed to some mechanism to address HEU and Syria. But the scope of inspections appears limited to declared facilities, with any investigation of the UEP or Syria addressed, for now, with interviews: “[S]enior U.S. officials said Pyongyang also approved outside inspections of all declared nuclear sites inside North Korea, as well as the scientific sampling of air, soil and other elements that could gauge the extent of the North’s production of fissile materials,” Solomon writes, “Pyongyang also agreed to allow the U.S. and international community to interview key North Korean nuclear scientists and to verify the country’s alleged efforts to produce fissile materials using highly enriched uranium, as well as to assist third countries in the development of their nuclear programs.”

Also, Kessler notes that the agreement is oral, rather than written. My guess is that is because the Chinese are (or, at least were) holding the text of the agreement pending delisting.

Comment [7]

Elaine Sciolino in the New York Times cites “European and American officials” as stating the IAEA has in its possession an Iranian document that describes assistance by a Russian scientist in developing a detonation system for a nuclear weapon design:

It was described as a “five-page document in English” dealing with experimentation with a complex initiation system to detonate a substantial amount of high explosives and to monitor the detonation with probes. There was no indication that the document was a translation of a much longer and more comprehensive document in Farsi.

The original document is described by officials familiar with it as a detailed narrative of experiments aimed at creating a perfectly-timed implosion of nuclear material.

According to experts, the two most difficult challenges in developing nuclear weapons is creating the bomb fuel and figuring out how to compress and detonate it.

An agency report last month revealed that Iran may have received “foreign expertise” in its detonator experiments.

[snip]

European and American officials now say that the “foreign expertise” was a reference to the Russian scientist, but offered only scant details. They said the scientist is believed to have helped guide Iranians in the experiments, but that he was not the author of the document.

Am I the only person who thought this sounds awfully similar to Operation Merlin — the alleged covert action to supply Iran with a Russian firing set? Here is the description of Operation Merlin, from James Risen in State of War (via an excerpt in The Grauniad):

The story dates back to the Clinton administration and February 2000, when one frightened Russian scientist walked Vienna’s winter streets. The Russian had good reason to be afraid. He was walking around Vienna with blueprints for a nuclear bomb.

To be precise, he was carrying technical designs for a TBA 480 high-voltage block, otherwise known as a “firing set”, for a Russian-designed nuclear weapon. He held in his hands the knowledge needed to create a perfect implosion that could trigger a nuclear chain reaction inside a small spherical core. It was one of the greatest engineering secrets in the world, providing the solution to one of a handful of problems that separated nuclear powers such as the United States and Russia from rogue countries such as Iran that were desperate to join the nuclear club but had so far fallen short.

The Russian, who had defected to the US years earlier, still couldn’t believe the orders he had received from CIA headquarters. The CIA had given him the nuclear blueprints and then sent him to Vienna to sell them – or simply give them – to the Iranian representatives to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

I am not saying that there can’t be two Russians who provided this assistance or that we know Risen’s sources were telling the truth. But I am saying that the two cases are close enough for the leakers to offer a clarification.

Risen claims the Russian in Operation Merlin told the Iranians that there “was a flaw somewhere in the nuclear blueprints, and he could help them find it.” So, maybe he followed up on the offer of help. Or the Iranians called one of his colleagues back home. Or it is a totally independent Russian route to a firing set.

Comment [9]